Validation of cleaning of pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, illustrated by determination of cephradine residues

Abstract

The systematic approach developed to assess the amount of residues left on manufacturing equipment surfaces from product carryover is known as cleaning validation. Current trends have seen increasing demand for rapid sample analysis time along with low detection limits for verification of cleaning validation samples. A total organic carbon (TOC) method is sensitive to the ppb range and is less time consuming than high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how to develop and validate a TOC method for cleaning applications. Validation of the cleaning procedures for manufacturing or processing equipment has been presented in this paper. A sensitive and reproducible method was developed and validated for the determination of cephradine in swab samples. The method for determining residues of cephradine on manufacturing equipment surfaces was validated for precision, linearity, accuracy, limit of quantification and % recovery of a potential contaminant. The sampling procedure using cotton swabs was also validated. A mean recovery from stainless steel plate close to 78% was obtained. The assay was linear over the concentration range of 30 to 600 ng ml−1 concentration (R ≈ 0.9987). The calculated limit of contamination value was less than 315 μg cm−2, during three consecutive cleaning trials.